Field of Invention
The present application pertains to service group based virtualization and load balancing of radio access networks where macro and small cells coexist and collaborate to enhance network capacity.
Discussion of Related Art
A number of related art is present. The patent application US 2015/0341977 A1 discloses a dual connectivity architecture where a heterogeneous network (HetNet) consisting of a macro cell and small cells that have completely overlapping coverage areas with the macro cell, serve at two distinct frequency bands. To avoid handover failures due to multiple possible handovers as a user equipment (UE) traverses through the coverage area boundaries of the small cells, the UE is proposed to remain connected to the macro cell base station (BS) while connecting to the small cell BS whenever the UE is in the coverage area of the said small cell in order to increase throughput. The control and user planes are not separated between macro and small cell in this application.
The patent application US 2016/0112164 A1 discloses methods and programs for a network node to use a secondary cell for dual connectivity. The UE identifies a random access channel (RACH) in the secondary cell for dual connectivity use. The patent discloses methods such as using a dedicated RACH preamble to avoid the contention. Control/user plane separation, as well as separation in other dimensions such as the downlink/uplink separation are listed as possible scenarios.
The patent application US 2016/0105877 A1 specifies a method and device for allocating uplink resources in a wireless communication system utilizing dual connectivity. The first eNB receives buffer size information from the UE and the first eNB informs the second eNB about the uplink resource allocation. The control and data planes are not separated between the eNBs.
In a wireless communication system utilizing dual connectivity, the patent application US 2016/0119826 A1 specifies a method and a device for re-transmitting the lost packets by the macro base station due to the release of small cell connectivity. The patent application US 2016/0113058 A1 specifies a method for a UE to receive multi flow data with respect to an EPS bearer in a dual connectivity wireless communication system. The separation of data and control planes are not considered in these applications.
Patent application WO 2015/159879 A1 discloses a device and method for splitting the uplink data between the base stations in a wireless communication system using dual connectivity. The link qualities between the UE and the base stations and the base station loads are used in the computation of the splitting ratio.
Patent application WO 2016/021662 A1 specifies a technology in a wireless communication system utilizing dual connectivity, to re-establish the RLC layers for the master and secondary base stations and to re-establish the PDCP layer when the uplink transmission direction of a split bearer changes.
Patent application US 2015/0334737 A1 discloses a method to manage and multiplex the uplink data transmissions of a wireless terminal that is connected to two base stations under the dual connectivity technology. The patent application WO 2016/006679 A1 specifies a method to suppress a decline in uplink throughput in a wireless communication system that utilizes dual connectivity, by controlling the transmission powers to each base station.
Embodiments of the present invention are an improvement over prior art systems and methods.